Sunday’s Best Reviewed: Game of Thrones

On the busiest night in June, pretty much all the show gets solid to rave reviews, except for Ray Donovan, and, well, that’s probably because Ray Donovan. It was a night of season finales on HBO, with its signature show taking the recap night with an episode that set up a couple new thronesitters, and sowed seeds for an epic battle. Tech comedy Silicon Valley might have won a different night with a rare evening that found the gang in charge of their own destiny. As AV Club‘s Les Chappell mused, it’s a surprisingly satisfying “finale that pays off virtually all of the season’s running threads and character connections, and despite the “everything old is new again” shading of events, it feels like exactly the place the show needs to be.” HBO’s remaining show, Veep, earned fewer raves, but mostly positives. Even Jessica Goldstein at Vulture, who gave it 5 out of 5 stars, called it a “totally brutal finale.”

Game of Thrones, the TV series, finally outpaced its source material – with George R.R. Martin still being cagy about his next book’s release date – but it hasn’t lost a step yet. Vulture‘s Jen Chaney declares “after more than 50 episodes of buildup, we have finally arrived at a climactic moment. Winter is no longer merely coming. Winter is here.” Matt Fowler at IGN added the “big reveals and revenge kills that helped everything add up to a very surprising and satisfying season finale.”